追忆乔布斯：天生具有设计魔力

乔布斯掌握着创造诀窍，而且拥有一些魔力。 我听过他的一次主旨演讲，当时他演示了一个与iMac捆 绑在一起的照片编辑程序。我想像不出还有别的业内高管，能像他那样身穿牛仔裤，在舞台上随心所欲地演示自己公司的产品。

Steve.Jobs 1955-2011

他每次做主旨演讲时都是这种做派。在这次演讲中，乔布斯一步一步地演示了剪辑照片的简单过程。他把照片与其硬盘中的一首歌曲连接起来，敲击回车，嘴里发出“砰”的一声。在安静黑暗的现场，一些图像立刻铺满巨大的屏幕，图像中的人滑稽可笑，不知道是谁家的女儿。与此同时，范•莫里森吟唱着“她像图珀洛蜂蜜一样香甜”。 我为之心动。我相信，在座无虚席的剧场里面，大家都会有这种感觉。乔布斯说：“这就是我们工作的动力。” 几年后，我在参加一个座谈会后与Andy Bechtolsheim闲谈。这个瘦高的企业家从牛仔裤兜中掏出一部iPhone，这是第一批iPohne，并开始在上面兴高采烈地指指点点。最后，有人看明白了，他说，这部手机就是一个开放的浏览器。 Bechtolsheim说得对。此前许多人都生产过手机，但没有一个人意识到其主要功能是充当裤兜中的浏览器。而且尽管触摸屏技术已出现多年，却无人想到利用该技术使手机更加易用。 我从未采访过乔布斯，但我有时与另外两个人聊天，他们都很接近乔布斯。 本文下一页：乔布斯身边的人 本文授权编译自EE Times，版权所有，谢绝转载

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{pagination} 乔布斯身边的人 每次在乔布斯发表主旨讲话之后，我都会在人群中找到乔恩.鲁宾斯坦（Jon Rubinstein）。从Next Computer那段日子开始，他就是乔布斯的硬件设计主管。在每次活动结束后乱哄哄的时候，我总想探听一些内幕消息，但Ruby从来不向我透露只言片语。但他确实让我明显感觉到，他对正在从事的工作感到兴奋，而且对在舞台上表演魔术的人敬佩不已(也许还有些敬畏)。

Palm公司原CEO，现惠普产品创新高级副总裁兼总经理，Amazon 董事会成员。在惠普12亿美元收购 Palm 后进入惠普，他曾经负责苹果公司iPod 项目，任高级硬件经理，在 Palm 任职期间，他主持开发的 webOS智能手机，一度被认为是 iPhone 的真正对手。他也因为在苹果公司挖人导致乔布斯异常愤怒。

不只有他为乔布斯的魄力所折服。乔布斯的主旨演讲，每次都会吸引众多知名人士前来聆听。有一次活动结束后，我在人群中看见了《玩具总动员》的制片人John Lasseter。我走过去作了自我介绍，并感谢他的影片给我带来娱乐。 那些Pixar电影拍得栩栩如生，我不清楚乔布斯在其中到底发挥了什么作用，但我凭直觉可以猜到一二。 几年前我遇到托尼•法德尔(Tony Fadell)，当时他是一个体重超重的年轻人，在PDA初创公司General Magic担任初级工程师。那时候该公司欣欣向荣，但后来破产了。在其职业发展过程中，我与他保持着联系，直到他成为iPod之父。

托尼•法德尔，上世纪90年代曾在飞利浦和大众 魔术公司任职，是他最初设想了“手持音乐播放器+在线音乐商店”的创意，并试图建立一家以此为核心业务的公司。后来他的创意被苹果采纳，成为了后来的iPod 。

托尼会不时地接听我的电话，这对于工作在无限环岛1号(1 Infinite Loop)苹果总部的人来说是很稀有的事情，苹果严格控制员工与外界的信息交流。但像Ruby一样，他也从不向我透露任何内幕消息。 然而，有一次托尼给了我一些启发。他向我介绍了他的一些设计理念，我想他的理念肯定受到了乔布斯的影响。 托尼说，重点不在技术上面。他不注重最新的、最出色的元件。重要的是知道什么元件可以大批量供应，在全球供应链中你可以依靠哪些企业，如何率先把它们以有意义的方式拼在一起。 现在我认为设计就是拼图游戏。一名优秀的工程师面对成千，甚至成百万张可用的图片。如果他们能够找到一种新颖的方法把这些图片拼在一起，打造出酷毙了的产品，那就是魔力。 虽然不是工程师，但乔布斯拥有洞察人们可能需要什么产品的诀窍。他可以激励他人做出这样的产品。他的名字出现在317项苹果专利上面，从中可以看出他的影响力到了多么具体的水平。他可以穿着牛仔裤站在数千名听众面前，表达他对那些产品炫酷应用的兴奋心情，介绍这些产品是多么容易使用。砰！ 他是一名深信自己产品的发布会导演。谢谢你的魔术，乔布斯。 编译：Luffy Liu 本文授权编译自EE Times，版权所有，谢绝转载 参考英文原文：Jobs: A flair for a little design magic, by Rick Merritt

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{pagination} Jobs: A flair for a little design magic Rick Merritt Steven P. Jobs had a knack for creating a moment, a bit of magic. At one of the handful of his keynotes I attended, he demonstrated a new photo editing program bundled with the iMac. I can't think of any other industry chief executive who—in jeans—has the chutzpah to do his own live demos of his company's products on stage. In this one of many he did in every keynote, Jobs stepped through a simple process of creating a photo montage. He linked the pictures to a song on his hard drive, hit return and, "Boom," he said. In the dark silence, funny, silly images of someone's daughter filled the giant screen as Van Morrison sang, "She's as sweet as Tupelo Honey." I felt a tug. I think everyone in the packed theater did. Jobs said, "This is why we do what we do." Years later I was talking to Andy Bechtolsheim after a panel session at some other event. The lanky serial entrepreneur pulled out of his jeans pocket one of the first iPhones and began exulting over it. Finally someone gets it, he said, the cellphone is an open mobile browser. Bechtolsheim was right. Many people had made cellphones before, but none had the stunningly simple realization that its main function was to be a browser in your pocket. And none had the idea of using touch screen technology, which also had been available for years, to make it easy to use. I never interviewed Steve Jobs, but I sometimes talked to two people close to him. After every Jobs keynote I would wander through the crowd and find Jon Rubinstein, Job's hardware engineering lead since the days of Next Computer. Ruby would never give me any of the scoops or inside information I would probe for in those chaotic moments after the event. But he did give me a palpable sense that he was excited about the work he was doing and venerated (maybe even feared a bit) the man who made the magic on stage. He was not alone. Those keynotes were well known for having a sort of front row of deacons there to watch Steve do his thing. After one event I saw in the crowd John Lasseter, the producer of "Toy Story." I was able to make my way to him, introduce myself and thank him for the hours of entertainment he gave me. I do not know exactly what role Jobs had in bringing those Pixar movies to life, but my intuition can connect the dots. Years ago I met Tony Fadell when he was a young overweight junior engineer at General Magic, a high flying PDA startup that crashed and burned. I stayed in touch with him as his career progressed until he became the man behind the iPod. Tony would take my calls from time to time, a rarity in the information lockdown of anyone working at Apple headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop. But like Ruby, he would never give me any scoops or inside information. However, once Tony helped flip on a light in my head. He shared with me part of his design philosophy, something I imagine was touched by the design philosophy of Jobs. It's not about the technology, Tony said. He didn't care about the latest, greatest component. What was important was knowing what it available in high volume, what puzzle pieces were out there in the global supply chain you could depend on—and how you could put them together in really interesting ways that no one else has done yet. Now I think of design as a puzzle game. A good engineer sees thousands, maybe millions of pieces he or she can use. The magic comes when they see a novel way a bunch of them fit together to do something insanely great. No engineer, Steve Jobs had a knack for seeing the sort of insanely great things someone might want. He could drive others to deliver them. In a sign of the detailed level of his influence, his name appears on 317 Apple patents. And he could stand up in jeans in front of a few thousand people and communicate his great excitement about the cool things those products did and how easily they did them. Boom! He was a showman who deeply believed in his product. Thanks for the magic, Steve.